Session check-in
After you finish working through the content for each session, I want to hear about what you learned and what questions you still have.
To encourage engagement with the course content, especially the readings and videos—and to allow me to collect the class’s questions each week—you’ll need to write a short list of responses as part of your exercise.
You should answer these two questions each session:
- What were the three (3) most interesting or exciting things you learned from the session? Why?
- What were the three (3) muddiest or unclear things from the session? What are you still wondering about?
You can include more than three interesting or muddiest things, but you must include at least three. There should be six easily identifiable things in each check-in: three exciting things and three questions.
Make sure you focus on the readings and class materials.
In the past, I’ve had students (1) write about interesting things that they did that week, like “I saw my nephew” or “there’s construction along my street” (REALLY), or (2) narrate their assignments, like “one interesting thing is that I loaded data with read_csv(); another interesting thing is that I plotted it with ggplot()” (REALLY).
The point of this assignment is to help you reflect on what you’re learning.
Don’t overthink this assignment! In the past, I’ve had students panic because they can’t find three interesting things that I’d want to see. I’m not looking for anything specific here.
As you read and take notes, you’ll (hopefully!) think “Huh, that’s cool. I didn’t know that before!” That’s what you should be talking about here. There are no right answers!
And don’t outsource this assignment to ChatGPT! In the past, I’ve had some students turn in check-ins that left in text like this (REALLY TRULY):
Certainly! I can help you think of three things that you found interesting that would prove to the professor that you read the materials…
Like, yikes.
I will grade these check-ins using a check system:
- ✔+: (11.5 points (115%) in gradebook) Response shows phenomenal thought and engagement with the course content. I will not assign these often.
- ✔: (10 points (100%) in gradebook) Response is thoughtful, well-written, and shows engagement with the course content. This is the expected level of performance.
- ✔−: (5 points (50%) in gradebook) Response is hastily composed, too short, and/or only cursorily engages with the course content. This grade signals that you need to improve next time. I will hopefully not assign these often.
Notice that is essentially a pass/fail or completion-based system. I’m not grading your writing ability, I’m not counting the exact number of words you’re writing, and I’m not looking for encyclopedic citations of every single reading to prove that you did indeed read everything. I’m looking for thoughtful engagement, three interesting things, and three questions. That’s all. Do good work and you’ll get a ✓.
You will submit these check-ins via iCollege. You will write them using Quarto and they will be the first section of your weekly exercises.